The Architectural Model

<b>An investigation of different uses for the architectural model through history&#151;as sign souvenir funerary object didactic tool medium for design and architect's muse.</b><p>For more than five hundred years architects have employed three-dimensional models as tools to test refine and illustrate their ideas. But as Matthew Mindrup shows the uses of physical architectural models extend beyond mere representation. An architectural model can also simulate instruct inspire and generate architectural designs. It can be among other things sign souvenir toy funerary object didactic tool medium or muse. In this book Mindrup surveys the history of architectural models by investigating their uses both theoretical and practical.</p><p>Tracing the architectural model's development from antiquity to the present Mindrup also offers an interpretive framework for understanding each of its applications in the context of time and place. He first examines models meant to portray extant fantastic or proposed structures describing their use in ancient funerary or dedicatory practices in which models are endowed with magical power; as a medium for architectural reverie and inspiration; and as prototypes for twentieth-century experimental designs. Mindrup then considers models that exemplify certain architectural uses exploring the influence of Leon Battista Alberti's dictum that models be simple lest they distract from the architect's ideas; analyzing the model as a generative tool; and investigating allegorical analogical and anagogical interpretations of models.</p><p>Mindrup's histories show how the model can be a surrogate for the architectural structure itself or for the experience of its formal tactile and sensory complexity; and beyond that that the manipulation play experimentation and dreaming enabled by models allow us to imagine architecture in new ways.</p>